“We feel ourselves wounded by what is wretched, foul, and fell,but we are sometimes wounded by the beauty as well, for when it whispers,it whispers of the worldthat might have been our birthright,now banished…”—Douglas McKelvey, Every Moment Holy

Most of the light in the universe is invisible to the human eye. We see an estimated .0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum, and that estimate is based on what we can measure with current information and technology. The eye takes in a tiny fraction of what is real and present. Or, stated differently, the scope of what we cannot see is vast.

[Editor’s note: In case you didn’t know, Malcolm Guite has an excellent collection of poetry for the seasons of Lent and Easter—one poem for each day, including classics like Dante, contemporaries like Rowan Williams, and the work of Guite himself. The collection is called The Word in the Wilderness, and it makes an excellent companion to the Lenten season. To give you a taste, here’s a poem of Guite’s called “Dancing Through the Fire.”]

I was giving a lecture in Oxford the other day, and took the opportunity, as I often do, to drop into the Eagle and Child. It’s a fine old 17th-century pub, unspoiled by “improvement;” it still has a couple of those lovely wood-panelled “snugs” which encourage camaraderie and close conversation—and, most famously, “the Rabbit Room,” where C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and their friends met on Tuesday lunchtimes, for the kind of sparring, cajoling, but ultimately encouraging conversation that was at the heart of their informal club, “The Inklings.” As Lewis said of these pub sessions in a letter to his friend Arthur Greeves: “The fun is often so fast and furious that the company probably thinks we’re talking bawdy when in fact we’re very likely talking theology.”

It’s no secret that Jonathan Rogers is a wellspring of writerly wisdom, a masterful storyteller, and a disarming conversationalist. He has all kinds of resources available at his website—and now, he’s teaming up with the Rabbit Room Podcast Network to launch The Habit Podcast.